Moscow: It’s the U.S that is STUCK in Iraq & Afghanistan; not Russia in Syria

WASHINGTON DC – John Bolton, National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump, recently stated that Russia “is stuck” in Syria. A senior official in Moscow commented on his statement.

Bolton was quoted by Reuters as saying that Russia “is stuck” in Syria, seeking other countries that can finance the reconstruction of the Arab country, stressing that this gives Washington an opportunity to press for Iranian forces to leave.

A senior Moscow official responded to Bolton’s statement, noting who is “really bogged down.”

“We wanted to remind John Bolton that the country is under security, and the United States is in fact stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the source said.

International journalist and Middle East affairs expert Abbas Djuma commented on the words of the American adviser, stressing that the US has taken a “comfortable position” in the resolution of the situation in Syria.

For him, what Bolton said follows the idea expressed earlier by President Donald Trump that the country does not want to finance the reconstruction of the Syrian economy.

“It is because the Americans have come to Syria to destroy and this is easier than building. They say that they fight the Daesh [ISIS], but they do not want to spend money on anything else… Such a position is very comfortable,” Said Djuma said.

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In addition, he added, the US has no reason to help rebuild Syria because it did not achieve its main goal – to change the regime in the country by overthrowing Bashar Assad.

Washington’s claims that Russia is “stuck” in Syria, the analyst believes, do not correspond to the truth.

“Russia has come to Syria not to ‘clean up’ after the Americans, but at the official request of Damascus to eliminate the terrorists,” he continued.

Djuma stressed that the territories liberated with the help of Russian aviation nowadays are already recovering step by step.

Conflict in Syria has continued since 2011. In 2014, the United States with its allies launched in the Arab country an operation against ISIS without official authorization from Damascus and the UN. In 2015, at the request of the Syrian authorities, the Moscow Aerospace Force began its anti-terrorist operation in Syria in cooperation with Syrian government forces.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies. He has an MA in International Relations and is interested in Great Power Rivalry as well as the International Relations and Political Economy of the Middle East and Latin America.